The Fury Out of Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

supported by pillows, and if he was in pain he concealed the fact expertly.
    “I should have thought of it,” Colonel Frazier muttered. “A chaplain is the one person who can talk back to a doctor!”
    Vukin recovered his power of speech, and pointed at Whistler. “Out!”
    “Bah,” Whistler said, not moving. “Wait’ll the next time you try to buy beer.”
    “Have you finished?” Vukin asked the chaplain coldly.
    “Now, Colonel—you know perfectly well my obligations to your patients don’t end until you bury them. And not even then, of course, but after that I can manage without the use your facilities.” He got to his feet, and clasped Karvel’s hand. “I think the major represents more of a challenge to my profession than he does to yours. Some men have mountains in their souls—mountains they are compelled to climb. Major Karvel owns an unusually lofty range. The summits are not only out of reach, but they are quite lost in the mist of self-doubt. I’ve never been able to decide whether I should be helping him to the top, or showing him a way around.”
    “Did you ever try just giving him a kick in the pants?” Whistler asked.
    The chaplain smiled. “It isn’t the sort of task one can ever consider finished. One never knows what one will find on the other side. More mountains, perhaps.” He nodded to the colonels, and winked at Karvel. “Coming, Bertram?”
    Whistler got leisurely to his feet. He said to Karvel, “You oughta be grateful for the knock on the head. At least, now you got an excuse.”
    “Just a moment,” Colonel Stubbins said. “As long as he’s here, why don’t we go over the whole thing with both of them?”
    “You already talked to me,” Whistler said. “Anyway, I don’t like to stay in a small room with so much brass. Afraid I’ll get lead poisoning, or something.”
    Sergeant Gore suffered a sudden attack of coughing, and by the time Colonel Stubbins had stopped glowering at her Whistler and the chaplain had left. Colonel Vukin motioned an orderly with extra chairs into the room. Introductions were performed, Colonel Frazier got everyone seated, and there was a brief pause while Colonel Stubbins eyed Vukin suspiciously.
    “This meeting is confidential,” he announced.
    “In that case I’d better close the door,” Vukin said, and did so, and went to stand at the head of Karvel’s bed. The three colonels shrugged in turn, and Haskins concentrated his attention on Major Bowden Karvel.
    His left knee bulged with a cast, and the pajama leg was tucked neatly around the stump of his right leg. His head was heavily bandaged. His pajama jacket, open at the throat, revealed the binder about his chest.
    That he appeared to be less than medium height was probably due to his wiry build. There was a touch of gray in the hair that the bandage did not cover, and he looked older than his thirty-six years; but his face revealed none of the defeat, or self-pity, that Haskins had half expected to find there. His bearing was that of a man who intended to get up and fight again.
    “Did you get the surveyors, sir?” he asked Colonel Frazier. There was a twang to his speech that Haskins could not place.
    Frazier nodded. “They haven’t finished yet, but so far they confirm everything you said. That sphere—unidentified object, we’re calling it—represents dead center, and whatever it was—”
    “Force X,” Colonel Rogers murmured.
    “—Force X spiraled out from there. The tree you picked out last night was the first obstacle it struck.”
    Colonel Stebbins cleared his throat ostentatiously. “If you don’t mind an interruption—” He looked at the others. No one minded. “This is an important point, Major. Did you notice anything at all before that tree fell?”
    “No, sir,” Karvel said.
    “Think carefully, Major. That U.O. didn’t materialize on the spot. It had to come from somewhere. We’d like to know how it got there.”
    “I can’t help you, sir. I’d